This is going to be a short review because, simply stated, there isn’t much to be said about this game, and very little of it is good.
iShot Pirates is an incredibly simple iOS game in which you shoot motionless pirates in the face by tracking a movement target. The pirate stands there as a target randomly dances around his face, and the player has to drag a bullet from the corner of the screen and drop it on the target. That’s it. That’s the whole premise. Simple mechanics are great–perfect even–when it comes to iOS games, but not this simple. All you’re doing here is dragging a dot to a moving cursor.
The game has three difficulty levels, each a genuine jump in challenge. For every perfect shot, you receive three additional bullets, so you could easily play on forever. There isn’t even a timer on any of the difficulties. If you wanted, you could take naps between shots without hindering your score.
The weirdest part about the difficulty options is that you don’t have a separate high score for each of the three levels. The way the menus are set up, it appears as though the game will display a high score for each level, but it doesn’t. It simply displays your overall highest score. Since this is the case and easy mode is so much easier, what is the point of even playing the other difficulties? You don’t get more points for playing on medium or hard—not even bragging rights.
The game does look nice with good art and good music, and it plays without any technical problems. It’s not a broken game by any means–it’s just one that isn’t even worth the $0.99 it costs. It feels like a game created during an introductory game design class, and one that wouldn’t get a very high grade at that. The player isn’t offered any motivation to play it. Skip this one.
